Pakistan’s solar revolution

[dan_b]

22GW in one year?!

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/04/pa ... an-energy/

[Stig]

A very interesting article, nice to read a bit of depth behind the headline. That picture looks suspiciously AI-generated though, what's going on around that hand rail?

[Mart]

A very interesting article, nice to read a bit of depth behind the headline. That picture looks suspiciously AI-generated though, what's going on around that hand rail?

Michael Barnard typically uses an AI generated pic at the start of his articles. In fairnes they always say they are AI generated and with the description of what was asked.

Looks to me like the first part of the description has been accidentally missed, and just the end of the description printed - "Including workers in traditional dress handling solar infrastructure"


Article reminds me of something I saw or read recently stating that PV deployment figures were often being underestimated. An example given was the huge difference between panels imported to Pakistan, v's panels exported (travelling through). The suggestion was that Pakistan was deploying vastly more PV than people realised, particularly as it was probably on the demand side, so not reflected in national power generation stats.

PV has got to be unstoppable now for all countries with decent sunshine, regardless of wealth, since the returns are simply so good. Repeatedly trucking barrels of petrol and diesel around African countries is gonna struggle against trucking PV panels for repeated energy production, as adoption of cheap and simple BEV's grows.

[knighty]

I'd take any figures coming out of Pakistan with a very large pinch of salt..... (as I would a lot of other places)

[nowty]

Talking about unusual places for solar, I remember a story on the BBC in 2020 about Solar in Afghanistan where it was being used for irrigation instead of diesel pumps in the poppy industry.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53450688

The initial outlay was for more than using diesel pumps, but the running costs were almost zero.

This was a market in Lashkar Gah.

[Fintray]

Is that market stall part of the buy them cheap and pile them high franchise?

Other question is how did they get them up there?

[resybaby]

Loving the taxi drivers attempt to gain a few free watts into his 'ev', just got to turn the roof mounted panels over the right way

Wonder on the chances of the bottom panel in that huge stack being in one piece

[Mart]

Is that market stall part of the buy them cheap and pile them high franchise?

Other question is how did they get them up there?

A. Simples. The stalls either side sell trampolines and mattresses.

[Fintray]

It's so obvious now you point it out!